Preparing my stock for sale

08:00

Once again, another winning title!

I'm a member of a facebook group for local crafters and the subject of photographing stock came up and it inspired me to take some photos of how I prepare my stock for sale so that I can share it with you. I only photograph small items this way, you could use it for jewellery, supplies, smaller items but I guess the principle is the same for larger items.

I use a cheap point and shoot camera, my windowsill (any time of the day and weather) and PicMonkey for editing. This is really not that hard.

I pull my voile back from the window, pull my curtain out of the way, lay a piece of fabric down (cord this time because I couldn't be bothered to iron my white cotton) and that's my set up done. As you can see it was a gloomy day, mid afternoon, raining and I didn't even bother to move my big scraps bin. (This is the bin I have for pieces too small to be considered worth keeping. It's mostly thread cuttings if I'm honest, it's hard to part with scraps!)

I bought my tripod for 69p from B&M but it's the first time I've used a tripod, usually I hold my camera. I just wanted to try it out. For 69p it's great quality!

I use either macro or super macro depending on the item, I use auto white balance (there are people unsubscribing from my feed now..auto?!), no flash and I have it on shaky hand setting. I can never seem to get them not blurred when I don't use shaky hand!

Never, ever, ever, ever use flash. Especially if you are photographing metal or gems, natural light is always better, even on a dull day.

Here's my photo straight out of the camera. I resized it but didn't edit it at all. Not bad, but could be enhanced.

I used PicMonkey to 'auto' adjust the exposure and resized to 800px on the longest size. That's it. Two clicks. Go to exposure, click auto adjust. Go to resize, resize to 800px on the longest size (it will work out the other as long as you've got keep proportions ticked) then save. Job done.

Next I sort my triglides and rings out into size and colour piles. I stock silver nickel, antique brass and gunmetal in sizes 1", 1.25", 1.5" and 2". I've also tried some triglides for thicker straps in 1.5" this time, but I'm not so keen on those. My originals look so slick!

Each buckle comes in a plastic bag, ten buckles in another plastic bag. I open them all out, make sure I've got enough to make up a set and then bag them up in sets.

Oh the wasted plastic!

I use glassine bags and washi tape to package my strap kits in. Each bag has one triglide slider buckle and one rectangular ring. I have spare rectangular rings which are bagged separately. I use a different colour washi tape for each colour metal I have and I store them in boxes in size order.

As you can see from this photo I appear to have over-ordered on the gunmetal 1.5" sets this time. They're my favourite though it's hard to find matching magnetic snaps.

Oh yeah, and if you want to see them in the shop, click the 'My Etsy Store' tab on my top bar.

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5
comments

Hey, I see that you're just as high-tech as I am when it comes to picture taking. lol Most of the photos of my soaps are taken at my kitchen table which has windows nearby on two sides. My old camera used to blurrrrrr everything, but my newer Panasonic makes up for my movement and does a great job, imo. I also like to take photos outdoors on a cloudy day. Those seem to be the best.

It's so exciting that you're going to be moving - exciting, I say, not necessarily a fun process. :-)

Thanks for your tips, they are appreciated. I've heard of PicMonkey but I've never used, I think I will visit the site. Your photos are really beautiful, I generally use Photoshop Elements, but it always takes me hours to edit a photo, but I like the results.Thanks for this post, it was very informative!Marisa fromhttp://passionetcouture.blogspot.ca/

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About me

Hi, I'm Samantha, aka Mrs H. I live in the beautiful South Wales valleys with my husband Dus and our unfortunately nicknamed daughter Elvis. I write sewing patterns for bags and love seeing what you create with my designs!